Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor) (2 page)

And so I had to prove myself to the band and
the diehard fans at large who were intent on hating me for the
simple reason that I was not Atticus Ford.

OK, they cited a whole lot of other reasons
for hating me:

1. I was not even as talented as Atticus Ford’s
   little finger
   

2. The slight hoarseness in my vocals were
   better suited to a country ballad singer than a rock star
   

3. If I thought I could make up for my lack of
   talent with a whole lot of gyrations onstage and sex moves, think
   again. I was not Atticus Ford and I didn’t even have a modicum of
   the man’s charisma.
   

(OK. I geddit. I’m not Atticus Ford.)

(You should see the amount of hate comments I
got on my official video channel on YouTube.)

So I had to work doubly hard just to make the
grade. I could honestly say no one worked as hard as I did in the
band. I learned new dance moves, and practiced them until they were
perfect. I took singing lessons from an ex-opera singer who now
suffered from morbid obesity.

I hired the most expensive choreographer in
the business to make sure I looked good on stage and on our music
videos. It was easier for the other band members. They played drums
and acoustic guitars respectively, while an orchestra supported us
in the background. I had no instrument to croon with and
fondle.

And so, unlike Atticus Ford, who largely
jumped up and down the stage and seized everyone’s attention with
his sheer charisma, I improvised with dancing.

Naturally, the haters were on to me
again.

They said:

1. I couldn’t dance
   

2. I couldn’t dance to save Atticus Ford’s life,
   and that was why he was still dead and not spotted in Vegas like so
   many dead celebrities
   

3. I should just stop trying to be Atticus Ford,
   because I was never going to replace him.
   

But I wasn’t trying to replace Atticus Ford.
I was just trying to carve out my own identity and my own niche. My
manager told me I should grow a skin thicker than the bark of a
rainforest tree, and I should just stop reading my YouTube
comments.

It was harder than weaning myself off Candy
Crush, which I played during our tour downtime hours.

Anyhow, the haters didn’t stop me from trying
harder to prove myself. I studied the art of music and took my
turns at writing songs for Red Velvet. Two of those songs were rock
ballads with an Eagles tunesy country rock tone to them, and they
became Top 10 Billboard hits. One even stayed in the Top 100 for 34
weeks. Another one was a Queen cover I did – ‘It’s a Kind of
Magic’. That shot to No. 1 and stayed there for two weeks.

The haters were silenced. I could do it on my
own.

So all that took four years. And during the
last two years, after I had my own hit with a song that was penned
my own hands, both music and lyrics, I let myself indulge a
bit.

Oh yeah.

I didn’t swear off sex indefinitely.

I merely took a hiatus.

REBECCA

Kurt Taylor!

I don’t believe he’s here!

I don’t believe how I am thinking about him
in exclamation marks!

I am a tempestuous, impetuous person, and my
blood was boiling over in a quick simmer – like a kettle spilling
over – when I threw the pail of dirty water at his face. I remember
that face well. That deceptively handsome face, with his mouth
twisted in a sneer whenever he favored me with a glance. Or
sometimes he would give me a quizzical look, as if he couldn’t make
up his mind where I stood with him.

Well, he certainly got the brunt of my anger.
And he deserved every bit of it.

I hate him.

(There, I actually said it without an
exclamation mark.)

I hate, hate, hate, detest, loathe Kurt
Taylor, and I wished the earth – or in this case, the ship’s deck –
would just open up a hole and swallow him.

The reason why I hate him so much makes me
heartsick. Every time I think of it, a knife twists in my chest,
and a burning pain spreads down to my gut and up my throat,
flooding my brain with things I’d rather not think about.

Kurt Taylor stands there on the sun deck of
the
Princess Alexandria
, staring at me. His jaw has dropped,
and his hair is plastered on his forehead in wet, straggly strands.
He always did have the most marvelous hair, which he keeps long,
even in high school. I envied him that hair, especially since mine
is mostly unmanageable without a ton of mousse.

His hair.

I mustn’t think of his hair. There was many a
time in high school that I caught myself staring at that hair. In
some classes, I sat behind him, and I was staring at his glossy
auburn looks, which are slightly wavy at the back. At that time, it
was shoulder-length. Even then, I had the compulsion to twine my
fingers around it, just to see how silky it felt.

Now, his hair is longer than shoulder-length,
but he ties it up with a band into a ponytail.

Mrs. Caldwell next to me says “Wow!” in that
excitable, whispery voice of hers. Her eyes sparkle as brightly as
her cataracts would allow.

“You got him good!” crows the kid who has
come onto the scene. He’s the one responsible for me recognizing
Kurt Taylor. So I owe him one. Or not, depending on how you look at
it.

I drop the now empty pail onto the deck
beside me. It strikes the floor with a clatter. My chest is heaving
and my arms ache from lifting that heavy load.

The kid turns to Kurt Taylor.

“Aren’t you gonna hit her with that mop?” he
demands gleefully.

Kurt Taylor doesn’t acknowledge the kid’s
advice, thank goodness.

Instead, he closes his mouth, probably
because soapy water is running down his face and hair and getting
into it. The front and shoulders of his shirt is completely
drenched. He is wearing some plain blue overalls which remind me of
the kind our high school janitors used to don.

You can still see the outline of his hunky
body underneath it, especially now that he is wet. You can see how
well-filled his sleeves are. There are probably hard muscles inside
those sleeves. His pectorals are probably hard as well, and now
that his shirt is wet, his nipples are outlined like little pointed
peaks.

Ooooo.
The unbidden shudder trills
between my legs.

I suppress it sternly.

His butt is equally tight as well, as are his
thighs. He is as tall as I remembered. His eyes are still as blue
as ever. They are now wide open with surprise. Shock.
Remembrance.

Bad remembrance.

God, he’s beautiful. I have always thought
so, that smug bastard. Unfortunately, his beauty also goes with
cruelty. I only know it too well.

He doesn’t say anything to me. He is still
too stunned. I suppose he doesn’t expect to see me working on a
cruise ship. Then again, I didn’t expect to see him mopping the sun
deck of a cruise ship on the Atlantic en route to the Bahamas.

You see, I purposefully did
not
follow
Kurt Taylor’s career.

I did not, for instance, watch his
performances on that program,
American Rock Star
, where they
screen contestants for that awful rock band whose music I never
liked.

I did not, for another instance, download his
official Vevo channel on YouTube to watch his music videos as he
gyrates and twists and shakes his well-shaped bum to dance moves I
never knew he had when I watched him glide on the floor during our
prom.

I completely refused to indulge in Googling
his name to see which news channels he appeared on. I’ll admit I
was curious, but I stemmed that curiosity by choosing to work
harder than ever at my college courses.

It was difficult at first, but that curiosity
wore off after a while, and Kurt Taylor became another footnote in
the corner of my brain, to be tucked away and filed in a box and
stamped with ‘DANGER: DO NOT OPEN’.

So I am fairly astonished to see him working
a mop on a cruise ship.

But I can’t ask him his reasons for being
here right now, because I have just dumped water all over him. He
probably will never speak to me again for as long as we both shall
live. Which might not be very long in my case if he has anything to
do with it.

My cheeks feel warm. Whatever possessed me to
lose control of myself like that? But Kurt Taylor had always done
that to me – bring out the worst of my temper. I really can’t
suppress my rage and negative energy around him. Never could and
probably never will.

Before I can embarrass us both any further, I
make myself walk away without another word.

*

Damn.

*

With these kinds of things, there are usually
repercussions.

The bad thing about being in a ship is that
there is an astronomical price to download anything on the
Internet, either by the data plan on your cellphone or the ship’s
computers in the business center. The staff go everywhere with
pagers and walkie-talkies.

If I had a cheap Internet line on my
cellphone, I would be furiously downloading webpages now as to find
out why Kurt Taylor is on this ship.

I am in my bunk. Moping. Or at least, trying
to mope while I speculate as to what happened with Kurt Taylor.

I am naturally too proud to ask anyone about
him. I’m sure that snot-nosed kid would have given me the rundown.
As it is, my pride is leaving me to speculate wildly as to why he
is on this ship, washing the deck.

Some reasons may possibly include:

1. His latest album release has failed
   miserably. He is now irretrievably bankrupt. Instead of working at
   Wendy’s and asking, “Would you like fries with that?”, he opts to
   hide away his sorrows at sea instead.
   

2. He has two million dollars to pay in back
   taxes and he’s on the run from the IRS.
   

3. He is in hiding from an overzealous fan who
   is stalking him and wants to make him her baby’s papa.
   

4. He is actually on the FBI’s witness
   protection program
   

5. He lost a bet to a band member and he has to
   perform janitorial duties as a penance.
   

This is probably the only time I have
regretted being on a cruise ship during my four days on board so
far. Not having Google at my beck and call.

*

I do not actually work for the cruise line.
My job is more complicated than that. Uh . . . well, as complicated
as complicated first jobs get, that is.

As a psychology major, I wanted to work with
geriatrics, especially those who are pre-Alzheimer’s. I wanted to
do a thesis to see if constant mental stimulation – like doing
crossword puzzles or playing mahjong – would make a difference in
delaying or even preventing the disease. But before I can get to
the good stuff, the university sent me to a retirement home to talk
to the senior citizens there. It appears that I have to walk before
I can run.

Of course, it appears that the folks at the
retirement home have been planning a cruise outing for about the
better part of two years. And when I happened to show up on the
scene, after three months into the job, they asked me to be their
minder.

“It’s a very tough job, Rebecca,” the manager
of the retirement home said.

“I know,” I said.

I was trying to contain myself from leaping
into the air with glee.

“At any time, one of our flock here can get a
heart attack.”

“I know.”

“Some of them are on medication, and you have
to make sure they take their pills every day while you are
there.”

“I know. It’s a very difficult job, but
someone has to do it.” I nod sagely. “I have a system to remind
them to take their pills.”

It was called ‘timed’ reminders on their
cellphones, which they had to carry every hour of the day.

I have never been on a cruise ship before. I
have never been to the Bahamas. So when they offered to pay my
passage for me – on a discounted fee, under the senior citizens’
fare – I jumped at the opportunity.

As a ‘working’ staff on board, along with the
other tour guides and cruise agents, I am required to carry a pager
in case someone in my charge has a heart attack.

My pager beeps now.

Insistently. Annoyingly.

I share my cabin with a tour guide from New
Orleans, and she is out on some deck activity now – probably
playing parlor games with the retired folks.

I’m awfully jumpy whenever my pager beeps. It
could be one of my charges keeling over from a heart attack. (Hey,
they are old. It can happen on a ratio of one out of two.) It could
be one of my charges actually keeling over and falling overboard,
which would then necessitate someone jumping in after them to
rescue them with a float and a line.

So I leap for the phone beside my bed now and
punch in the extension that appears on my pager’s digital
display.

“Rebecca Hall here? Did you page for me?”

An unfamiliar male voice resonates deeply on
the other side. “Rebecca Hall? This is the Captain speaking. Can I
see you in my office right now?”

Uh oh.

I swallow the sudden lump that has come into
my throat.

“Of course, sir. Right away, sir.”

I put down the phone.

Why am I calling him ‘sir’? I do not report
to him. I am not part of the crew. But he has such a stentorian
manner of speaking that I am naturally falling into an obeisant
state of mind, like hypnosis. I guess it is part of ‘working’ on
this shift. You basically just want to bow to a higher authority,
especially one with an appellation like ‘Captain’.

I scurry out of my cabin and make my way up
two decks. The Captain’s office and quarters are near the front
part of the ship so that he can be closer to the dock or whatever
it is Captains need to be close to.